


fingers on your throat (breathe baby)

by happycakeycake



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Biting, Blood, Blood Drinking, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Injuries, Possessive Behavior, Sexual Content, vague storyline it's kinda non-linear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 11:45:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11554530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happycakeycake/pseuds/happycakeycake
Summary: This is the closest Hoseok will ever come to heaven, teeth buried deep in Jooheon’s neck and draining him of his precious life-blood, drop by drop. It’s not love if he can’t bring himself to stop, is it?





	fingers on your throat (breathe baby)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [taelights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taelights/gifts).



> a big big big shoutout to taelights!!!! thank you for being the most supportive sweeatheart and a happy very late birthday bro please take my accidental birthday gift!!!  
> i wrote this fic sitting on a Costa Rican couch, listening to the rain and B.A.P.'s fermata on repeat so if you wanna attempt to recreate that mood please listen to the aforementioned fermata, i guess i need u, and the rain by ladies code.  
> thank you for reading!!!

The first time the translucent points of Hoseok’s teeth pierce into soft flesh, Jooheon cries. He muffles his sobs into a cold bare shoulder, shuddering with every slow pulse of his damaged vein.

Hoseok’s hold is strong and stable, and yet it’s too cold to even offer a semblance of comfort. Still, when hard arms tighten firmly around him, Jooheon enfolds himself within their cold grasp, surrendering himself to the muggy ice that is slowly sleeping into his bones, through his very being.

With every long drag of Hoseok’s stained lips against his skin, Jooheon can feel his eyelids drop just a millimeter more. He can’t tell if the roaring in his ears is the rush of blood leaving his body or the unintelligible voice of some higher being telling him to turn back while he still can.

It’s only an echo, he decides drowsily as he pulls Hoseok even closer with a gentle hand to the other’s porcelain cheek. The two holes in his neck widen painfully, and Jooheon promptly passes out.

 

-

 

Hoseok wakes the next morning, covered in a sheen of regrets from last night. He can’t actually sweat, what with his lifeless body and dry skin, but the images flashing through his mind have him remembering the days when he could still wake with liquid fear dotting his face. And yet, even as he is now, he’s still susceptible to the weakness of human emotions.

In his blood-sated dreams, Jooheon arrives with coldness in his touch, pressing unfeeling fingers to the same unfeeling flesh. Hoseok hates it: the flat light in his eyes, the smell of death rank on his skin. Somehow, there’s a fire ignited in his gut, simmering low and steady for what feels like centuries on end. Hoseok wants to dig his fingers through his brain and rip out every fiber of those images, until he’s as dead on the inside as he is on the outside. It’s disgusting - the thought of Jooheon becoming something like him. The quick pulse in his gut, however, says otherwise.

When he looks over, pulling his mind out of the haze, Jooheon is collapsed with his cheek squished into the ragged couch cushions. The morning light bathes his curled form in a soft pool of yellow, setting his skin alight with golden flecks of heavenly fire. It must be blasphemy, Hoseok thinks in a daze, for someone like him to look upon such a scene like this. Something about it though keeps his gaze frozen in place, forcing him to move as if he were trapped like a bug in a jar of amber.

The Jooheon before him now looks so distinctly different from the one in the dark recesses of his mind, Hoseok almost questions whether or not he had dreamed up a different person entirely. The younger man’s sleeping cheeks are flush with life, pulsing soft and pink with precious blood, but it’s nothing compared to the cold plane of his nighttime alter ego’s bared neck. The flame in Hoseok’s stomach flares just a bit brighter at the memory of it. It’s a complete illusion, but he’d like to pretend there’s at least a semblance of warmth under his morbid fingertips when they brush against Jooheon’s round cheeks.

Still, he can’t quite manage to figure out what it means when the sleeping figure doesn’t automatically flinch away from his bitter caress. Even though he can’t exactly fool himself into thinking something delusional - _as if Jooheon could really love him_ \- the unmoving body under his touch would say something otherwise. Hoseok doesn’t exactly know what to make of that.

 

-

 

Jooheon spends the morning with painkillers flowing sluggishly through his system and dried blood rusting along his collarbone. Hoseok sits him down on the kitchen table and wipes away the remains of last night with a damp washcloth and a quiet touch. Jooheon stares blankly at nothing through the cleaning process, marveling at how strangely gentle the hands on his neck are, at how different they are compared to the unyielding fangs from last night. He’s not sure what to make of it.

Hoseok winds strips of gauze around his throat, pressing the bandages gently against the cleaned wound. The tiny holes in Jooheon’s skin still sting, but the gauze remains a pure white, unstained by any drops of color. Hoseok clips the ends together with a small safety pin, letting it rest lopsidedly against the bent line of his nape. It works out somehow, pulling the bandages just so, that his breath catches in his throat for a few painstaking moments.

Hoseok sees him out with a hooded gaze, stopping to lean casually at the doorframe, silently watching the pale edge of Jooheon’s jaw disappear down the stairs and out of view. Even after the younger man is long gone, the clear picture of his bare neck elongated in a stretch of moonlight still remains plastered across Hoseok’s irises. He quickly shakes himself out of it, rubbing a hand over his face to wipe away the flashing images.

It’ll fade away with time, he sighs, stepping into the shadows of his apartment. After all, most things do.

 

-

 

At work, Jooheon keeps his scarf wrapped tightly around his bandaged neck, even throwing his coat on top of his uniform for good measure. In the darkness of the club, his slightly over-bulked form blends well enough with the shadows of the hefty furniture pieces no one could ever really tell the two apart. Even more so than usual, Jooheon tries to stick completely to the walls, only leaving his solid refuge when absolutely necessary. With his glasses forgotten in the employee lounge, he has to squint through the violet and neon blue strobes floating across his vision to even make out anything through the fog of astigmatism. The black formless guests mixed in with the lights wander around listlessly until they finally form one horrible writhing entity that moves as a nebulous blob across the dancefloor, disappearing through the flashing rays of filtered light.

Jooheon peers through the indiscriminate haze towards what he hopes is a table. The previous guests, who had appeared in his near-sighted vision as a monstrous mass, seem to have finally disappeared, so he allows himself a slow breath of relief before slipping jerkily out of the shadows. His skin tingles clammily in the roiling heat of the club, and Jooheon reaches a hand consciously to his bandaged throat as he floats past a sea of watchful eyes. His coat collar and cheap scarf are still fully intact, so he forces his nervous hand back down to his side, making sure to keep it still there this time.

The tingling settles into an ever-present undercurrent of paranoia against his skin, but Jooheon resolutely ignores it in favor of the scattered trays of food and drink laid across the empty table. He reluctantly snaps on a pair of sanitary gloves, curling his fingers once or twice as he tries to re-accustom himself to the strange skin-tight feeling. The plates glisten wetly with dark untouched pieces of meat, and Jooheon piles them onto a tray as quickly as possible, swallowing down the bile in his throat with each audible squish of the food dropping onto hard plastic. Even with gloves on, the moist press of the mystery meat against his fingers is enough to make acid sting hotly in the back of his throat. He tries to avoid making any physical contact with the food, using utensils and even crumpled napkins when he can to sweep up the soggy pieces onto a platter.

By the end of it though, the plain blue of his surgical gloves are dyed with fresh drops of red, turning his fingers a dark purple. It’s the same story with the drinking glasses, the iron in the leftover drops at the bottom of the cups rising up and forcing him to gag discretely into his scarf. They roll around, taunting him as he carries them shakily to the kitchen. No matter how hard he wipes at the glasses, the red remains, perpetually staining the transparency of the glasses a pastel pink.

When he strips off the gloves, his hands are flushed with heavy blotches of blood. Scrubbing with the ice-cold water only makes his teeth chatter and his fingers burn numbly. The red remains, and Hoseok’s blood-soaked mouth flashes across his vision like a cheesy jumpscare. The itch on his neck suddenly scorches with the intensity of a wildfire, and Jooheon decides he _needs_ to get these bandages off of him immediately.

Fingers swollen and aching with blood scrabble at the scarf, ripping the cheap fleece away without a moment’s hesitation before setting themselves upon the clean bandages with a renewed sense of fury. No matter how much he pulls, the thin gauze only continues to snap back fluidly without any intention of letting go of his throat, clinging on adamantly like a second skin. A rough noose is beginning to form around his neck, and he panics breathlessly, gasping as every airway seems to close off. The bandage only sticks on stubbornly, melding itself into his shaking flesh.

His nails are sore from scratching at the gauze over and over again, growing so ruddy with blood Jooheon swears he can see a drop of red drip down from the torn edge of his pinkie. In a sudden fit of desperation, he reaches back behind his neck for the crooked safety pin, picking at it with side of his nail. The immovable thing only binds the bandages even closer against his throat, but he grits his teeth through the sensation and forces himself to pull as hard as possible.

Finally, with an especially sharp jerk, the pin pops loose, but not without a deadly consequence. The sharp edge of its open needle slices a clean line down the soft padding of his finger, drawing its mark in a neat river of red. It quickly drops to the floor, forgotten, the evidence of its last violent act sliding down its rusting body.

The bandages immediately fall loose, pooling into downy folds around Jooheon’s bare neck. Muggy air rushes to embrace the newly exposed skin, encasing it in a heated welcoming embrace. However, he’s frozen in ice, staring, enraptured in horror at the incarnadine liquid spilling out from his open wound. His make-shift noose may be gone now, but it’s somehow become even harder to force out even breaths from his heaving lungs.

His hand shakes with minute tremors when he raises it for further inspection, the blood drops trembling erratically down his finger. The wound is neither too deep nor too shallow; it’s serious enough to warrant a bandage, but definitely not a trip to the hospital. (Not that he would go willingly either way). The white gauze becomes dirtied with pink blossoms as he winds it around his bleeding finger, holding the bandage there so rigidly he can’t even feel the pain of the cut anymore.

The clock ticks down faster than ever, each second pushing Jooheon closer to the end of his night shift, closer to freedom. (Closer to seeing Hoseok again). The wound on his finger tingles at the last thought, and Jooheon can’t tell if he’s truly terrified or excited. Either way, the rush of pained adrenaline has started to drain from his veins, leaving behind only exhaustive dread. The hour hand strikes one, and Jooheon strips out of his uniform gingerly, holding his gauze-bound finger away from any possible contact with his clothing. He’s sure he looks like an absolute idiot, but if even the flow of air rubs against his wound in all the wrong ways, then there’s no possibility he could ever handle the touch of his finger on cloth, or worse against _skin_.

He shudders at the hidden implications of that, sickened at the thought of how many clients and customers he’ll have to pass on his way out of work, of how many people that could potentially smell the rancid odor of blood clinging onto him. Of how, out of those people, one or two of them are bound to reach out and touch him and grab him and-

The click of the employee card in the time slot pulls Jooheon out of his panicked reverie, and he slowly blinks the world back into focus. The dirty yellow of the swinging lightbulb flickers over his hands, staining them in uneven patches of muddy green. His breath comes out in shuddering gasps, each one thundering in his ribcage like an errant hummingbird before escaping on slitted wings through his open mouth. It’s so loud, he can’t even hear the sound of his own thoughts over the raucous flickering of his vision and the rough drag of his lungs.

The shift of the door slides through his ears, and Jooheon stumbles out into the foggy lights, drunk on the terror spiking through his body. Fear compels his legs to move, to carry him past black masses that emerge out of the haze, seemingly without any warning. Some of them brush dangerously close, whipping a length of hot air along his exposed neck and open bite marks. The sickness in his stomach bubbles dangerously along the surface with each close contact, and Jooheon tightens his coat as much as possible around himself, taking care to not let it brush against his throat. His finger throbs periodically in its flimsy bandage, so he gingerly curls it into his pocket, shielding it from view. However, with every step he takes, the wound only continues to scream silently in protest, and he has to bite harshly into his cheek to keep himself from causing a very much unneeded scene.

Relatively, he thinks it works well enough as he muffles his whimpers into the shredded skin of his mouth. The taste of iron hits his tongue, and all he can do is let his own blood slip thickly down his throat, working vigorously to swallow it all. Once he gets out of here, he’s going to throw up everything he ate today, from a meager energy bar to a cup of stale coffee, and then a little bit more until he’ll probably dry heave himself to death. It’s better to be dead and numb than being able to feel the sensation of blood everywhere: in his mouth, bleeding into his tongue, the slickness of it pouring down his skin, filling him up to the very brim.

The club pounds, and Jooheon drags himself closer to the exit with every terminal beat, steps sticking wetly to the floor. His shoes are completely dry, but he swears he can hear a loud splash every time his foot brushes against the dusty ground. The door to freedom looms up ahead, beckoning to him quietly with fluttering moths and blinking street lamps. He continues forward, pulling himself through rising waters as the drops cling to him with crying children’s hands, begging him to stay with them.

Suddenly, he looks down and the floor is dry, hard, and stable under the soles of his sneakers. That’s not it though, he berates himself mentally, there’s something else that has stopped him in his path. He squints through his foggy vision, trying to pinpoint just what has melted away the sea below him. It’s a hand, he realizes blankly, watching as the vague outline of long fingers flicker in and out of focus. They wind around his left arm, crushing his coat sleeve in their steel grip. Jooheon slowly observes the way the fabric rises up in between the v of pale fingers, resembling the spill of thick chalky rivers winding through the uneven mounds of indomitable mountains. He tries to slip those wrinkled landmasses away, pulling them roughly against the solid rivers, hoping to flatten them back into normal fabric again. However, the waters only seem to grow, echoing loudly underfoot and around his arm, sucking him into an inescapable vortex of stillness.

Jooheon tries to jerk himself away for the second time, heart pounding, tendons tightening, and muscles spasming to an almost painful extent. The clawed grip loosens for the illusion of a second before suddenly yanking his hand upwards towards a bone-white smile. The face flashes blurrily in his eyes, much like everything else around him, and the only thing Jooheon can really make out is a set of glimmering fangs, pointed directly at his gauze-bound finger.

In a millisecond, they’re snapping towards his hand, closing with an audible click around nothing when Jooheon barely manages to jerk his arm just an inch away from the stranger’s gaping maw. It’s a close call, and he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to avoid the bite for a second time. Fear is exhausting, and he’s been on the precipice of giving in to it all day, tipping onto the furthest edge right now. He tugs at his arm furtively, weakly, as one last-ditch effort, and it works about as well as an ant trying to fight a mountain, which is to say not at all. With every ounce of strength gone, he allows himself to be dragged closer and closer until the only thing he can feel is the inferno of the hot breath of hell fanning across his face.

The fangs glint in perfect tandem, and Jooheon realizes vacantly somewhere in the back of his mind he’s going to die like this - drained dry and forgotten on the dusty floor of some shady underground feeder house. What a way to go, he thinks hysterically as a laugh rises, unbidden, to the top of his throat, buzzing against sealed lips, asking ticklishly for an exit.

Just as Jooheon is about to spit it out into the man’s grinning mask as his last act of spite, he’s yanked out of the client’s death grip by another equally rough hand. _It’s Hoseok_ , he realizes with a dizzying rush of relief, trembling as he gives himself over to the other’s steady grasp around his shoulder. For once, Jooheon can see perfectly, every hard plane of Hoseok’s face cut sharply into diamond spectres, his white hair a shining beacon in the violet smoke of the club. There’s nothing even remotely saintly about him though, not when his face is twisted into ice-cold fury, the white of his fangs piercing through the darkness in a maligned snarl. His hold is strained so tight, Jooheon wonders briefly, dazedly, if he’ll be able to see a bruising handprint that matches from the tips of each finger to the width of each knuckle marked onto his skin tomorrow. He shivers apprehensively at the thought of it.

Hoseok turns rapidly, eyes flashing wildly as he does so, pale irises streaking a bright semicircle around his head, forming some sort of demented halo. Jooheon can’t get it out of his head, watching enraptured as he allows himself to be dragged roughly out of the club. The flickering halo quivers unsteadily as they go, breaking and reforming itself around Hoseok’s dazzling white locks. When he tries to reach out to touch it, to see if the translucent ringlet is actually staring solidly back at him, Hoseok only jerks his hand back down, continuing on without even the slightest turn of his head.

How unfair, Jooheon thinks petulantly, huffing angrily as he trips over from the older man’s uneven pace. He’s bleeding from the inside his mouth, down his finger, and his neck still stings with the ghosting bite of sharp fangs. And yet, Hoseok continues to pull him along without pause like some sort of disposable rag doll. Jooheon can’t quite decide if bleeding out, dead on a floor stained with God knows what, is actually a better alternative to this, to being treated like some mindless object Hoseok owns inside and out.

They finally pass into the emptiness of the night, and the boom of the club fades into the rhythmic quiet of pinging street lamps and chirping insects. Unfortunately, it quickly fades into an indiscriminate hum as cotton muffles Jooheon’s ears at the sudden change of scenery. The world filters in through occasional bursts of sound -the gravel shift of his footsteps, the sizzling impact of bugs flying into burning bulbs- but other than that only silence echoes in his head. Hoseok continues on without pause, profile stony and still, lips pressed into a shadowed line of quiet. Jooheon’s never been good at reading expressions, but it’s always been infinitely impossible when it concerns the other man.

The numb grip around his arm finally disappears when the other man steps away to unlock his car, leaving him swaying, alone and disoriented, by the passenger seat. Seconds later, Jooheon feels the engine rumble to life under his fingertips and the click of the passenger side unlocking for entry. He gingerly pulls the door open, carefully curling his fingers under the handle, fearing that with the temporary loss in hearing he’ll somehow end up making too much noise. He sits down inside with the same amount of care, spine straight and knees locked in a tight line all the way down to his ankles. The car is already stifling enough with Hoseok’s silent presence, so Jooheon quietly folds into himself to take up as little space as possible.

With a light tap to the pedal and a harsh squeal of the wheel, they’re tearing out of the parking lot and far away from his personal hell for the night. The sight of scraggly streets overrun with weeds, cracking with neglect, and the ever-present throng of pedestrian feet, allow him to breathe easy again, the slow rhythm of his lungs pushing air back into his body with the soft lull of ocean waves. Sound eventually starts to trickle back into his ears as well, allowing him to hear the long drag of oxygen into his chest and the occasional thump of the car rolling over a pothole.

When he hears the murmur of indistinguishable sounds, he looks over to see Hoseok’s mouth moving in slow motion, the words “are you okay” corresponding with every dragging curve of his lips. Their sound comes to Jooheon, drowning on the bottom of a pool floor, rippling across the heavy water’s surface, too shallow to truly reach him through the liquid pressure.

Hoseok asks again, quickly taking his eyes off the road to observe the younger‘s befuddled look. Jooheon’s brown eyes are softly blurred with passing lights, but there’s an off-distance kind of glaze to them that makes Hoseok think he’s not quite all there. They pass by a small convenience store, and he pulls the car around on the spot, swerving into a desolate lot with an angry squeal of tires and a trail of irritated beeps from surrounding traffic. Jooheon glances around, terrified at the sudden route change, gaze flying wildly between Hoseok and the window, looking for some kind of hidden danger in the cloaked darkness.

However, there are no lurking intentions when the older man reaches out for a trembling cheek, uncharacteristically soft in his touch. The cold palm pulls Jooheon out of the waters, buoying him to the surface and forcing him awake. He blinks to full attention, staring directly into a pair of pitch black pupils, unmoving and trained on his own shaky pair. The chill from Hoseok’s touch seeps in, and Jooheon starts shivering intensely from the cold, shuddering as if he were possessed.

Hoseok watches intently as brown irises disappear under blown-out pupils, twin black holes eating up any semblance of light under Jooheon’s sweeping lashes. He waits for them to settle into a spastic fluttering, black orbs growing and shrinking every few seconds or so as Jooheon begins to truly take in the view before him.

Pale lips, smooth skin, and dark eyes furrowed in...worry? Anger? Inhuman. _Hoseok._

“Are you okay?” the older man whispers, hushed, voice low and placating. The nearby street lamp pops and burns out above them with a strobing of yellow spasms. It leaves his face in shadows, completely concealed except for a set of dark eyes, piercing silver through the blackness with the sharpest set of steel.

No, Jooheon thinks, I practically died.

“Yes,” he murmurs instead. “I’m fine.” The inside of his bitten cheek pangs sorely with an open stream of blood, and he swallows it down guiltily as he utters the lie.

Hoseok only watches him, immobile and static, with the same steady gaze, except this time he sees straight through the other’s weak lie. Still, the scent of iron is in the air, and Jooheon is safely tucked against his palm, albeit a bit shaken up, so he decidedly ignores the shaky lie in favor of much more pressing matters.

“You’re bleeding,” he states, his tone flat with no room for questioning. Jooheon flinches, immediately veering his bandaged index finger out of view, tucking it into the folds of his jacket. Hoseok’s eyes pin point onto the covert action, locking onto it with the accuracy of a hawk stalking its prey. An unyielding hand quickly follows, flattening out hastily curled digits and holding them captive, stiff against an icy palm. It’s more than ten times the strength needed to actually keep Jooheon’s hand still, but Hoseok is still so irrationally caught up in his failure to notice the blood blossoming across snow-white gauze, he doesn’t realize he’s forcing the other’s fingers to go numb.

Jooheon attempts to gently tug his hand away, but Hoseok’s sturdy grip remains unbroken, trapping him in place like a pinned butterfly, still alive and fluttering in place, its wings ripping a fraction more with every minute movement. Hoseok unknowingly hurts him further, mesmerized as he drags the softly pulsing flesh closer, spilt blood calling out to him with an irresistible siren’s song. _It hurts,_ more than any kind of pain from before - more than when Hoseok had turned, more than when he had lain still with glazed red eyes and a silent heart, more than his own racking sobs, more than the first aching bite. It hurts Jooheon more than ever because of how much Hoseok doesn’t realize, doesn’t know, the ever-present pain he causes him, pushing deadly poison into his system with every passing day.

(It’s all his fault really, all because of him, but Jooheon can’t say it - never out loud, anyway. Not when the Hoseok of now is so close to the Hoseok of then, only lacking a few pumping organs and a warm light in his brown eyes).

A hasty cry tears its way out of his throat when his finger is enfolded in a suffocating wet cavern, Hoseok lapping gingerly at his wound. Jooheon closes his eyes, clenching them shut as salty tears begin rolling down his cheeks. He waits it out, stomach jumping with each passing second, shredding his cheek into raw gashes as he bites into it to try and hold on through an eternity of torture, all centered upon a single, slim, shaking digit. When his spit-slicked finger is finally released into the tense space between them, Jooheon jerks it into the safety of his lap, burrowing it under the heavy layers of his jacket and out of Hoseok’s sight. The other’s black gaze still follows, trained without pause on where his hand would be, waiting with an unfaltering look of hunger in them. A phantom pain glances over the open cut, and Jooheon swallows down the feeling, along with another stream of sticky blood from his raw cheek.

“You’re hurting me,” he whispers hoarsely, threads of red sinew interlacing across the inside of his throat, muffling his muttered words. He tucks his chin into the edge of his scarf, shrinking his hands away into oversized sleeves until only the pale moons of his cheeks are left exposed in the open air.

“I’m sorry,” Hoseok replies, pink tongue peeking through a pair of deceptively soft lips. He’s still hungry, Jooheon realizes, fear twisting, snake-like, through his stomach.

The other man sits back, far enough for him to fool himself into the illusion of safety for a moment or so, before he notices twin piercing pupils centered onto the target of his mouth.

Hoseok moves slowly, approaching in the most placating manner as he reaches for rounded fingertips peeking out from ragged sleeves. Jooheon is too slow to resist, allowing long spider-legged fingers to skate over his own in an unbreakable cage of cold flesh. They press over the cotton of his jacket, but a chill still manages to seep in, kissing him along the soft pads of his fingers to the heated center of his pounding chest.

“I won’t bite you tonight,” Hoseok breathes out, leaning ever closer. There’s still fresh blood flowing in Jooheon’s mouth, and it goes unspoken as to what’s about to happen between them.

Despite everything, when Hoseok’s mouth locks itself over his own, Jooheon can’t help but pull the other man closer. It hurts in the worst of ways, but neither of them are truly in the right state of mind to really try and stop each other.

Dimly, as Hoseok bites into his bottom lip, Jooheon wonders if he’s somehow become a monster as well.

 

-

 

“You look like shit,” Minhyuk says by way of greeting, looking bluntly at his friend from over the rim of his hipster frames.

“I know,” Jooheon mumbles, pulling a surgical mask over the mess that is the bottom half of his face. Hoseok had really done a number on it last night, a realization he had made on his own this morning, touching a hand gingerly to his mouth, horrified at the swollen reflection staring back at him with the same expression of terror from the mirror.

He runs his tongue along the seam of his cheek, prodding softly at the uneven patches of healing flesh. If he concentrates hard enough, he could probably taste the unique coldness of Hoseok’s mouth mixed in with the slick heat of his own blood. Jooheon hastily swallows away the strange feeling, pulling the mask over the tip of his nose.

“Here, on the house,” Minhyuk sighs, pushing a cup of steaming hot coffee in front of him. “You definitely look like you need it most today.”

Jooheon takes it gratefully, cradling it within his sleeved palms, letting the heat seep slowly through his aching muscles. The bitter liquid burns on its way down his raw throat, but it’s a welcome change to the taste that had occupied his mouth all of last night.

Minhyuk slides into the seat in front of him, completely abandoning work for the moment. He looks around slyly, hunching over to make sure none of his coworkers have noticed his slight indiscretion. No one is truly awake enough at this time of day to have seen him slip out of his job, so he turns his attention to the bigger problem at hand.

Namely, his friend staring dazedly at nothing in particular with bloodshot eyes, puffy from overuse, and almost every inch of him bundled up with heavy coats and sweatshirts. There’s not a bit of skin on show, save for the soft mounds of his cheeks and the miniscule tips of his fingers peeking out from under layers of oversized fleece.

Minhyuk doesn’t understand how Jooheon can keep doing this to himself, and he voices it out loud, exactly so, without any intention of mincing his words. The person in question winces at the other’s unforgiving tone, choosing hesitantly to ignore the question in favor of sticking his swollen face into the clouded coffee cup.

Minhyuk isn’t going to let to let him off the hook so easily - not when Jooheon looks like he cried himself dry and then some more for an entire night. His friend has always had relatively slim eyes, but at this point they’ve basically been reduced to two tiny slivers of brown, his pale pink eyelids badly inflamed and swollen from yesterday’s tears. Minhyuk wonders worriedly to himself about when the last time was that Jooheon actually spent an entire night resting, without blood or nightmares disturbing his dreams.

“Show me your neck,” he demands, even as he dreads the sight that might meet his eyes.

“No,” Jooheon snaps out, huddling even further into his heavy layers.

“It’s that bad then, is it?” the barista states rhetorically, knowing all too well just how terrible the condition of Jooheon’s neck and his general state of being must be at the moment.

“What is?” Jooheon evades the question, doing his best to stare blankly into his cup, up until the moment he inevitably surrenders to Minhyuk’s unbreakable sense of worry.  

“You. Him. Hoseok.” Each word is spat out like a rock, dropping with an uncomfortably audible clunk onto the stained table between them.

“It’s fine. We’re fine.” Jooheon replies shortly, voice tight as he glares hotly at Minhyuk for intruding on his private life.

“Stop playing dumb, I can see what he’s doing to you, and we both know you won’t last much longer like this,” Minhyuk retorts back just as quickly, the same heat flaring through his tone.

“What would you have me do then? Leave him to starve and die?” Jooheon’s eyes flash with the cold edge of a dagger, burning with the bite of a thousand snowstorms. “Or worse,” his tone softens to an almost inaudible extent, “should I let him get drugged up on some feeder’s morphine injected blood?” His whisper trails off in horrified realization at the last statement, a question directed moreso at himself rather than to Minhyuk. No, he decides, he’d rather let himself be drained dry before allowing any of that to happen.

The barista watches determination harden itself into caged metal in hazy brown pools, and he chooses his next few words with care. “Still, Hoseok is a grown man,  or whatever he technically is now. I think he could afford to lay off your neck for a few nights and find his own alternative source of food for a while, can’t he?”

Jooheon props his chin against the ridge of his palm, gazing at nothing through the window panes. “No,” he mutters definitively, taking another searing gulp of black coffee. “No, he can’t.”

He swallows the remnants of the drink, letting the bitter aftertaste sit like honey in the back of his throat, imagining the caffeine there slowly build up into drops of intangible tar inside of him. It’s a purely selfish intent, but the moment Hoseok no longer depends on him, no longer _needs_ him like this, Jooheon will lose the one thing that had made him happy - or the closest he had come to it anyway when Hoseok had been warm, flushed, and breathing, pressed close to his side through every harsh winter’s night.

He’s holding onto something that’s rapidly slipping out of his grasp, the untouchable affection that had made Hoseok so palpably alive, so loving, is disappearing so quickly now. Jooheon thinks he must have been loved at some point, but now he hesitates, keeping his thoughts carefully blank. He’s not quite sure if he still is - if he ever really was.

 

-

 

“You know you can’t keep this up for much longer, right?” Changkyun sighs, handing a lukewarm blood bag to Hoseok with reserved tension running through his hands.

“I know,” the older man replies, nicking the edge of the bag open with ease and licking a stray drop of stale blood off of his fang with visible distaste. If there’s one good thing to come out of his death, (of which there really isn’t at all) it’s the fact that he’ll never need scissors to cut through anything ever again. Not when his new set of teeth could pierce through bone in one bite.

Changkyun watches out of the corner of his eye, observing the bobbing motion of Hoseok’s neck as he drains the bag in one long gulp. It’s extremely visceral, from the way the other man drinks it down like a starving wild dog to the squelching noises of the wet bag being crushed within his bony fingers as he empties it into his thirsting body. He finishes it with a gasp, ripping the plastic away from his glistening mouth and out of view with a crisp break. Hoseok wipes away the red left on his mouth, pointedly avoiding eye contact with Changkyun as he licks away the smeared drops from the back of a pale hand.

It’s thin, slightly cold, and it definitely tastes too much like the clinical cleanliness of hospital equipment, but it’ll last him for two days more, two days more of being able to spare Jooheon from pain. It’s some much needed time for him to stay away, especially when the younger man is only an inevitable drug he won’t be able to stop himself from coming back to in due time. He had realized that the first time his own pair of still blood-flushed lips had fit perfectly over the younger’s full pair. Nowadays though it’s never seemed more true.

He can’t stop replaying every bite through his mind, the scenes flickering with smooth shadows like some old 1940’s noir film. He sees pale flashes of skin illuminated in shallow pools of moonlight, the long line of Jooheon’s neck proffered before him as the most lavish sacrifice. He remembers to the utmost detail of the taste of the younger’s blood, trickling into the parched cavern of his mouth with a flavor as sweet as the nectar of the gods. His veins would pulse warm with golden ambrosia for a few crawling seconds, making him feel as immortal and invincible as his kind were supposed to be, before settling into a steady thrum of heady power for the rest of the night.

Hoseok rolls the drops of leftover blood around in his mouth, sighing at the terribly bland taste. Compared to the roiling heat in his gut and the explosion of fireworks behind his eyes when his teeth broke into Jooheon’s skin, this barely produced even a single spark of color inside his cold dead body. When he had pierced through the cold plastic, the little flavor that was there to speak of was so flat and watered down Hoseok would have gagged if his body hadn’t needed the ferrous liquid so badly. It was nothing, a pale shadow, in comparison to the vibrant life he could always taste from Jooheon’s veins.  

However, among these permanently risque thoughts playing through his mind, are some scenes he’d rather not see every time he closes his eyes. The image of bare shoulders hunched away into a sharpened skinny silhouette against half-made bedding always leaves Hoseok’s heart pumping frantically to a phantom beat. He pictures himself reaching out, but every time his hand materializes, smoke-like, into the scene, the quaking shudders of Jooheon’s fragile body always send him reeling back to the blank safety of his mind. There are few instances where their eyes will ever meet voluntarily, but in the rare moments of when they had, Hoseok remembers he had always been the one to look away first. How could he have kept their gazes torturously connected when Jooheon’s shuttered pupils were locked with a bright ring of fear, haloed behind black circles like the weak light of the sun during an eclipse.

Maybe that’s what had pushed them apart, aside from the whole dying and coming back to eternal life kind of thing. It’s gotten hard for Hoseok to fill up the space next to Jooheon as he once did because the younger man barely looks at him anymore, and when he does, it’s only with glistening tears of terror or regret. Jooheon’s voice only comes to him late at night in the form of hiccuping sobs or broken moans, and just for a moment, Hoseok allows himself to wonder guiltily if that same torn voice will ever utter the words “I love you” to him ever again. It’s nonsensical and completely unrealistic, so he tucks the thought away for the millionth time to turn his focus to Changkyun’s furrowed stare.

“Gross, right?” he grins apologetically, teeth shining with pink residue.

Changkyun shakes his head, having seen much worse than blood-stained teeth laid out on an operating table. The sight before him is much more unsettling than scary - a reminder that, despite all appearances, Hoseok is anything but human.

“It’s not too bad,” he says casually. “How does Jooheon hyung bear with it everyday though?”

It’s meant to strike at an obviously exposed nerve, and Hoseok’s expression hardens rapidly, no trace of his affectionate self left on the icy plane of his handsome face. “He doesn’t,” he states, voice stable behind a fake calm, his placid mask unmoving. “That’s why I’ve been coming to you more often than not for blood.” He says it like his intentions are completely obvious, righteous and self-confident in each and every word. Changkyun can barely recognize what used to be his friend anymore, only a strangely harsh imitation of him left behind here.

The only thing that seems to have carried over from from his previous life is his unrelenting passion for any and all things concerning Jooheon, including the very person himself. In the past, it had been lovely in the most cliche of ways, with every possible cheesy scenario from kissing in the rain to coming up with the worst pet names for each other playing out between them. Those things had become so commonplace to the point that Changkyun had thought it impossible for Jooheon to not automatically light up with a dimpled smile every time Hoseok had come within even ten feet of him and for the older man to adopt the same enamored expression onto his face as well.

He had always thought they must’ve been made for each other in a past life. At least before Hoseok had metaphorically fallen from heaven and became this unrecognizable creature with cold fire blazing through his eyes and his lover’s blood pouring through his veins, standing before Changkyun now like some hellish Adonis.

He pushes through the wave of fear, shaking his head at the very idea of correlating Hoseok with something scary. He pulls up years of friendship into his mind, recalling the other’s crescent-eyed smiles, being terrified at having accidentally swatted a bee, and actually spilling tears over a newborn puppy. He tries to reconcile those vivid and very real memories with the person in front of him, but no matter how much he closes his eyes and imagines, he finds that he just can’t. The being before him is solid flesh and borrowed blood, wearing his friend’s face down to the exact detail, but Changkyun thinks something must’ve been left behind in the cold dark place Hoseok had passed through when he had been forcibly dragged back to life again. Some part of his ability to feel, to care, to _love_ must have chipped off, leaving the world with a slightly incomplete version of a person who had once been accused of loving too much and too hard at once.

Changkyun grits his teeth and meets Hoseok’s flat grey gaze with his own, shuddering when he sees nothing but darkness within those murky depths. “I’m sure you know I can’t keep supplying you with blood for much longer right?” he forces out, keeping his tone calm, even as Hoseok’s expression invariably darkens. Besides the fact that the hospital will inevitably notice their blood supply steadily decreasing, Changkyun personally doesn’t know how he could stand to see this version of Hoseok on a daily basis.

Selfish, he knows it, seeing as the less blood Hoseok gets from him, the more he’ll have to drain from Jooheon. It’s a cruel sense of self-preservation that keeps Changkyun’s mouth moving, words pouring out in a stream of steady rejection towards the other man’s tensed figure. He’s human enough to be scared, all thoughts of selflessness forgotten in the face of survival.

Nobody is so self-sacrificing in the face of danger, nobody truly human anyway. Jooheon is a strange exception, and Changkyun wonders if Hoseok’s death is the universe’s dark way of telling them that they truly belong together - a match made in heaven indeed. That way they’re both clearly lacking something human: one with a still unbeating heart and one that feels too much to be capable of withstanding such an intense range of emotion. It’s not hard to guess which one applies to which at this point.

“I’m sorry hyung,” Changkyun mutters, shoving his own selfishly bleeding heart down his closing throat.

“He can’t take a biting everyday,” Hoseok states it like a simple fact, but there’s an unfamiliar edge to his voice. Desperation? Anger? Changkyun has long lost the ability to tell.

“At this point, I’ll have to turn to a feeder house,” the older man sighs, closing his eyes and running a hand through white locks, tugging at the roots with poorly veiled frustration.

Changkyun’s throat seizes up, and he can’t stop himself from blurting out his next few words like a bunch of errant grasshoppers hopping around wildly to escape the clenched cage off his teeth. “He’d rather slit his own throat and drain every last drop of his own blood for you before you could even step foot into any feeder house.” He quickly tacks on a mild “hyung” at the end of a stagnant pause, pressing his lips closed before any more buzzing thoughts can escape his brain-to-mouth filter.

It’s silent between them for a moment, the emptiness seeming to stretch into an eternity for Changkyun as he watches Hoseok’s still, statuesque figure apprehensively. Then the other’s head shifts, and he’s suddenly looking into a pair of wide glimmering eyes. It’s like peering into a blackhole - a swirling mass that swallows everything it comes into contact with, greedily, selfishly, until it’s a mixed mess of every possible person and object that it has ever held dear in it’s everlasting, destructive lifespan.

Changkyun realizes how wrong he is now, how wrong he’s been ever since the very beginning. The Hoseok of now is no different from the Hoseok of then. The emotion streaking through the destructive galaxies of his eyes now is just the same as the intense rays of sunshine and glittering stars of then. The only difference, Changkyun considers breathlessly as his air is sucked into the great vacuum of darkness in Hoseok’s pupils, is the intensity of his emotions. There’s raging ionic storms and burning comets instead of warm wind and soothing waves, and if Changkyun looks into that falling galaxy for a moment more he’ll be razed right where he stands.

“I’m sorry hyung,” he repeats like a broken record, tearing his gaze away to look at the blank safety of the tiled waiting room floor. He’s immediately overcome by a simultaneous sense of relief and regret, an accompanying low thrum of shame pounding through the blood that’s rushing to his face. It’s the psychology of social obligation, and now he can’t help but feel glad Hoseok is no longer his mistake to deal with. Every dichotomous feeling that comes with that realization only makes him human after all.

And it’s the lack of it that makes Hoseok and Jooheon beyond it - existing here and yet born of another existence entirely, glorious beings capable of experiencing the most savage kinds of pure emotion.

Changkyun is only a mere bystander to this cosmic shift in the happenings of an ever-expanding universe, so he willingly stands back to let Hoseok walk away into the invisible forces of fate, parting like clashing waves around his very existence.

When his phone pings with a text notification two hours later, Changkyun closes his eyes and tucks away the simple “thank you” under his pillow with no reply.

 

-

 

“Can I bite you here tonight?” Hoseok mouths gently at the tender skin of Jooheon’s thigh, taking care to keep his fangs sheathed safely inside his mouth.

The owner of the body part in question nods numbly, naked, with sweat cooling against messy sheets and the euphoria of release still coursing through his veins. It’s the best time to bite for the both of them, rushing endorphins sweetening the taste for Hoseok and numbing the pain for Jooheon. Still, he can’t muffle the groan that escapes his mouth when two needle-sharp points bury themselves into the tensed muscle of his thigh, piercing deep enough the pain numbs him to the bone.

He struggles to find a comfortable position, shifting restlessly against sticky sheets until Hoseok hooks his other leg over a solid shoulder, keeping it there with a steady hand under the soft crook of his bare knee. The older man’s other hand grips like a vice around his thigh, pushing supple flesh still onto the bed as he fervently chases after his own ecstasy with closed eyes and a worshipful tongue, laving it frantically over the newly punctured wound.

Jooheon clenches his hands into the sheets, gripping the fabric tight to work through the surging waves of pain. He closes his own eyes, breathing hard through his nose as the ecstasy drains out of his blood and drop by drop into Hoseok’s shrunken veins. The pain comes in flashes of red and white, pulsing sporadically in the darkness under his eyelids, reminding him of the large city fires that burn so quickly the sky is dyed in the color of smoke and blood. It starts to spread, thin pinpricks turning into blooming swells that crash against the tender crags of his flesh and drown him in a roaring sea of agony.

He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, desperately pressing his flashing vision  into flickering darkness as he searches for something, for anything to temporarily hold off the pain.

Relief comes in the form of sunlit memories, of Sunday mornings spent together in the same messy unclothed state, naked bodies inextricably tangled between dirty sheets and promises of love. In the memory, Hoseok kisses down Jooheon’s shivering body, muttering dirty prayers he pretends not to hear through rose-tipped ears. In the space between his lids and the scene playing in his mind, the words echo so clearly he wonders for a moment if they could have been uttered out loud against his bleeding thigh.

It’s only meaningless talk, gasped out in the heat of the moment, sweet nothings about how pretty he is like this (“If I could, I’d have this image permanently seared into my mind,” Hoseok murmurs)

of how sweet he tastes (“Just like honey,” Hoseok groans into his stomach)

of how much he’ll love him (“Forever and ever, I’ll never let you go,” Hoseok whispers against flushed skin and tangled curls).

Suddenly, the source of the pain is gone, the space around his thigh empty as two marble hands come to rest simultaneously around his wrists. It’s only as his hands are pulled away from his face and he’s folded into a breathless embrace, does Jooheon realize that he’s crying.

Hoseok is everywhere at once, naked body wrapped around his and lips pecking a burning trail across his wet cheeks. Jooheon can’t stop the tears from flowing, taking in shuddering breaths as he’s sheathed inside of Hoseok’s all encompassing hold. It’s like being shut within a blazing furnace, melting him to his very core. It’s too warm, too hot, too different from the usual cold edge of the other’s touch, and Jooheon can’t help but let himself be buried within its searing oven, letting the temperature seep like a heat wave into his heaving bones.

“Shh,” Hoseok hushes urgently, dragging his fingers through sweaty curls, pressing his lips to an errant lock of hair, to trembling cheeks, to slick eyelashes, to any inch of Jooheon he can get his mouth on. “Don’t cry,” he whispers, burying his own face into the crown of the younger’s head. Then, almost indiscernibly, he says in dry, raspy, desert breath, blowing the words like flecks of burning sand into Jooheon’s mouth, “I love you so much, don’t you understand that?” His lungs struggle under the weight of the confession, and he presses the crying boy closer, tight enough that if he closes his eyes he can pretend the soft whisper of “I love you” isn’t merely a figment of his imagination.

It’s not a lie when Jooheon doesn’t pull away, allowing himself to be held as he scrabbles wet fingers against Hoseok’s equally tear-soaked chest. It’s been so long, _too long_ , and his heart physically hurts from doubting, from crying - he just needs one moment more to convince his shattered soul that Hoseok still loves him like before.

“I love you, I love you-” Hoseok breathes out repeatedly into the darkness, pressing kiss after desperate kiss into Jooheon’s lax sobs with each short pause in his frantic whisperings of utter devotion.

Jooheon cries harder the more Hoseok talks, shaking like a billowing flag on a windy April day. The past is colliding into the present, his pure memories meshing painfully with the gut-wrenching words falling from Hoseok’s bloody lips right now. Jooheon can’t reconcile the two images presenting themselves before him, the two Hoseoks who had seemed so different before, now blending into one whole person whose chest is empty, whose touch chills to the bone, whose words are the exact same as before - who still holds him with the same fragile strength.

The night passes as the moon turns her pale face away from the pair of huddled lovers, leaving them buried within each other’s familiar embrace. Hoseok keeps Jooheon close, kissing him through every sob, every shiver, until he’s laid quiet and dozing against his side with swollen eyes and stinging lips. Hoseok forces himself to his feet, stalking out of the room, and it’s only then, with his back wedged firmly against the door, does he allow the gnawing hunger to overtake his senses.

Dimly, Jooheon sleeps on, curled around an empty spot on the bed.

 

-

 

The next day, or really night, Hoseok’s grainy figure is waiting for him outside of work. Jooheon can’t stop the accelerated pulse of his heartbeat, nor the way his feet automatically carry him without a moment’s hesitation to the other’s awaiting form. He’s pulled into an unrelenting embrace, and Jooheon buries his face into Hoseok’s ratty old hoodie within seconds.

He blows out a shuddering breath into the nonexistent space between them, going as limp as a ragdoll in Hoseok’s arms. The older man only holds him closer, squeezing Jooheon’s face to the crook of his neck and cradling the back of the boy’s head with a possessive curl of his fingers. He winds his other hand around the younger’s soft middle, pulling it in to meet his own, until he can finally feel heat seep snugly into the icy glacier of his body again. Flowers these days only remind him of the stink of wet dirt and dank mildew, but when he noses quietly at a head of light curls, he thinks this is what the bellflowers and daisies of heaven must smell like.

(He’ll never get there, but in this moment he’s close enough).

“I’m glad you’re safe.” Hoseok sighs, running his fingers down the fine hairs of Jooheon’s nape. The _today_ goes unsaid, but they both acknowledge the chilling possibility of it within the silence of their minds.

After so long, Hoseok is entirely too used to not receiving any form of reply from Jooheon, in regards to his affections. That’s why it’s such a surprise when careful fingers come up to delicately frame his face before leading it down for a chaste press of lips. The choked sound that arises from the back of his throat is swallowed by a wet mouth that works against his own in the most inviting of ways, and Hoseok wonders dimly about the last time since Jooheon had really kissed him like this: hot, sweet, and completely unforgiving.

The bites that come tonight are rougher around the edges, tearing ragged marks into Jooheon’s skin. The coming morning, however, features tender kisses over every needlepoint scar, pressed tightly into every wound with expertly wrapped bandages. This time, when Hoseok pushes a safety pin into the tight folds of the gauze, Jooheon swallows the acrid taste in his mouth and keeps breathing through the slow rush of panic.

 

-

 

“You’re looking a lot better these days,” Minhyuk comments, untying his apron and slipping into the empty seat in front of Jooheon.

The younger man takes a sip of his coffee, staring dazedly through the foggy window, mind caught elsewhere. “Do I really?” he asks flatly after a few beats, replying more out of an obligation to fill up the silence rather than having any actual interest in the stunted conversation between them. After all, his scars are fading as fast as they’re formed, and he finds that his daily thoughts are more often than not stuck on a certain white-haired individual. Even now, with Minhyuk’s critical gaze roaming across his bandaged neck, all he can really think of is the bare muscle of Hoseok’s back, opaque and smooth like a rounded stone in the early morning light. It’s more than a little distracting, and he takes another sip of coffee to wash away the image.

Minhyuk quietly takes in the dazed softness of his friend’s eyes, the warm pink of his round cheeks; he looks just as lovestruck as he did when he had first met Hoseok.

“Yeah,” he whispers, muffling a grin into his palm. “You really do.”

 

-

 

“It’s not that hard to ask for help, you know?” Kihyun sighs, brows digging themselves into deep furrows in his forehead as his face settles itself into its typical frown. He folds his fingers into delicate steeples, setting them onto the cluttered counter in front of Hoseok, the perfect picture of a worried friend.

“Do you want a book Kihyunnie?” Hoseok counters, turning towards the younger man with a gleaming smile plastered across his face, old recipe books swaying haphazardly in his arms. It’s three minutes to closing time, and Jooheon is a twenty-five minute drive from work, so the quicker he can close up the store and leave, the better.

Kihyun remains as stationary as a Grecian statue, comically daunting in all his pink-haired, 179 centimeter-ed glory. Hoseok avoids looking at him, choosing to fiddle with the mess of pens and receipts on the counter instead. Kihyun is stubborn enough to wait patiently through the uncomfortable stretches of silence, filled only with the rustling of paper, but he keeps an eye on the clock, knowing even his level of stubbornness can’t beat the physical presence of closing hour - and more importantly, Jooheon.

Which is why he presses himself to the counter, interlacing his fingers into tight knots as he speaks in hushed urgent tones. “There’s places, organizations, out there that can help with your...kind of situation. I’m sure any of them, all of them probably, would be willing to take you in if you just reached out.” Kihyun trails off brokenly at the end of his sentence, weak persuasiveness bleeding out of his voice, choosing to turn to wide pleading eyes instead.

Hoseok slips out from behind the counter, pulling on his coat as he brushes past the other man without even a backwards glance. The keys jingle melodiously around his finger, spinning wildly with each step towards the door. He would almost start whistling, but the weight of another set of footsteps behind his back keeps his lips still.

They both step out into the cool night air, Hoseok calm as he admires the bleeding streaks of red across the purpling sky. Kihyun, on the other hand, narrowly misses being clipped by the sharp edge of the door as it swings shut, locking with a distinct click behind him. When he looks over, Hoseok is already ambling towards the parking lot, so he forces down his rising panic and resiliently resumes his chase after the older man.

He gets to the car, chest heaving, lungs bursting as Hoseok waits, still and unfazed, not one strand of snow-white hair out of place. “What do you want Kihyun?” he demands more than asks, anger and impatience coursing like burning rays of plasma through the amber flickers of streetlight in his black pupils.

“I know the treatments seem harsh,” Kihyun gasps, hunched over with his hands, shaking, on his knees, head dropped as he tries to catch his breath. “But what choice do we have?” he whispers, squeezing out the syllables from his trembling throat and clenching his eyes shut.

Silence overtakes them, and he can feel the telltale signs of wetness prickling at the corner of his eyes as despair begins to cloud his heart. Just as the first sniffle threatens to make itself known, a hand comes to rest softly against his cheek, pulling him up and out of his hunched position and into a cool embrace.

He still hugs like he doesn’t know how to let go, Kihyun thinks mutely as messy tears roll down his face, melting into the threadbare fabric of Hoseok’s white t-shirt. The older man’s arms stay locked around him, an unmoving barrier that, while strong, doesn’t stop Kihyun from receiving everything from Hoseok in the hug, the other’s bright soul bared open before him for the taking.

When they separate, Hoseok looks down at him such an aching expression, Kihyun can’t help but wonder if this is what Jooheon goes through everyday, selflessly loved and selfishly loving beyond the very point of sanity.

Hoseok smiles, smooth cheeks pushing his eyes into curved crescents, and a piece of Kihyun’s heart chips off just a slight bit, falling to the ground with one last painful pulse. Hoseok shakes his head minutely, his sweet smile slowly melting into melancholic regret as he slips his arms away from around the younger man. Their embrace was never warm to begin with, but when the other man starts to leave, Kihyun instantly feels the chill of winter slip into the fracturing space inside his chest.

“Don’t worry so much Kihyunnie,” Hoseok laughs, his knowing gaze so soft it melts the very core of Kihyun’s soul. He pats the shorter man on the shoulder, heavy- handed and steady with reassurance. “I’m doing just fine. I don’t need anything else.” _Anything else but Jooheon_ is left unspoken and quietly understood between them.

Unbidden, Kihyun feels his head bob jerkily in agreement. His body hardens itself into dry clay, rooting him to the ground, forcing him to watch, immobile, as Hosoek walks away from any real possibility of salvation.

As the car roars to life, Kihyun can only feel a sense of numbness growing in the area where his whole heart used to be. The rest of it is shattering haltingly, each piece gradually joining the last, smashed and run over against the parking lot gravel. He presses his hand over the empty space inside his chest and waits to feel the weak thrum of his heartbeat again. The broken shards on the floor eventually collect themselves into one whole piece again - not fast enough to stop the numbing poison that has started to course through his veins, and yet, not slow enough either to wipe away the overcast thoughts clouding his brain.

He realizes it’s a bit hard to not fall a little, if not a lot, in love with the conundrum that is Shin Hoseok. The fact of it is that, even though Hoseok loves to be loved, he’s only ever really been capable of having one great love for his entire life.

Well, Kihyun scoffs to himself, coughing bitter emotion down, he’s cheated fate by having the same great love for two lives by now.

 _How selfish_ , he thinks bitterly, scuffing his boots against the curb as he heads to his own car, the cuts in his heart still pulsing with each heavy step.

 

-

 

Hoseok pushes into Jooheon with an achingly slow drag, slipping into the open body beneath him inch by agonizing inch. Anytime he even comes within the farthest vicinity of the younger man, he’s warmed to the very core of his lifeless heart, the feeling of life once again beginning to pump through his dried-up veins. In moments like these though, with Jooheon’s tight heat locked around his length and soft hips shaking within his bruising grasp, Hoseok thinks he might implode from how much he’s burning up both inside and out.

He pulls out slowly only to immediately push back in, hissing under his breath at the velveteen slide of their skin. Even after all that’s happened, at least the way Jooheon’s body eagerly responds under his touch is still the same. The way it stretches and bends, languidly inviting under the pale moonlight, is still so beautiful Hoseok needs every ounce of self-control in his system to keep himself from ravaging and ruining the gasping angel beneath him.

He grips tautly around Jooheon’s hips, fingers digging into the supple flesh there with the ease of a butter knife skimming off cream. There’s already the plum shadow of bruises dotting his skin, and Hoseok can’t stop himself from adding another throbbing set along firm thighs.

Jooheon writhes, digging the heels of his feet into the dip of Hoseok’s spine in an unspoken plea for him to move, to come closer, to offer him some form of relief, at least. Hoseok finally complies with a hard kiss, muffling breathy whimpers with his own open mouth as he finally begins thrusting in earnest. The rhythm is too slow, so steady it’s almost punishing, and Jooheon arches off the bed, pressing his body to Hoseok’s in a searing attempt to make other man go just a fraction faster.

Instead, Hoseok only cages him in with heavy arms encircled around his head and a solid chest bearing down upon his own. The cold is all over him, surrounding him and stretching him open with an unforgiving promise as to what’s about to come. It blazes against the fire spreading across his skin, the sputtering magma in his throat, and Jooheon doesn’t know whether he should pull Hoseok’s ice-cold body even closer or push it far away. He settles on ripping his mouth off of the other’s with an audible gasp for air, stretching his face to the moonlight in a desperate bid to cool the ragged lightning tearing its way through his veins.

The chill from the frozen path of light gives him a semblance of relief, winter seeping into his fevered body with a delicate snowflake tipped touch. Just as the fire finally under his skin dims to a barely bearable level, it comes back, roaring in full force from the furnace of his stomach, setting every nerve ending sparking alight again. Hoseok has pulled their bodies flush together, forcing Jooheon to grip him to the hilt as he stops to hook errant legs over his shoulders and to admire the view under him, stripped bare by the moon’s gentle caress.

 _This is the closest I’ll ever come to heaven_ , he thinks, a sick surge of pride striking through his stomach with a heated jolt. After all, how could God ever forgive him for ripping away one of his dearest angels for his own selfish gain? How could he ever be forgiven for keeping Jooheon where he doesn’t belong, staining him in the color of inhuman sin as Hoseok consumes him, _destroys_ him with the greed of his own insatiable appetite. He can’t stop though, not when Jooheon is lain before him like this, an invitation hidden under the guise of a luring siren’s call. His hand reaches forward as if in a trance, before settling without hesitation onto a glistening pink mouth.

Jooheon lets out a sound caught between a whimper and a moan, muffling it into the thumb that digs into his bottom lip. He bites down on it, gently, teeth scraping hard flesh as he grips Hoseok’s wrist loosely between the tips of his curved fingers. They both still for a moment, Hoseok waiting to be pushed away or pulled in and Jooheon deliberating with flushed cheeks and a half-lidded stare.

Nevermind, Hoseok decides again. There’s no way an angel could ever look at him like this, gaze hooded and hazy as if he was lust incarnate. He must be a demon, an incubus sent from the depths of hell to drag Hoseok back to where he belongs.

In the next second, between the slide of his thumb across full lips and sharp knees knocking against his throat, the words _I love you_ come unbidden, flashing like police sirens across the road of his mind. They tear through every other semblance of thought, leaving him with only one devastating confession.

There’s not even time for hesitation before they rip their way out of his throat, crashing like rocks into the heavy space between their naked bodies, leaving Hoseok’s still heart stinging at the impact. Jooheon’s brown eyes widen, two dark orbs reflecting the same surprise caught in Hoseok’s chest. He suddenly tightens around the older man like a vice, and Hoseok can’t stop the hard press of his hand on the other’s open mouth, choking at the swift bite to his finger and the tight fluttering around his length.

“Stop lying,” Jooheon hisses lowly, eyes shining wet with anger as he abruptly sits up, knocking Hoseok onto his back with a hard shove. He lands on the older man’s lap, still fully seated on his cock, hands blotchy and flushed as he digs them into Hoseok’s marble chest.

“I’m not,” the elder bites out, wincing quietly when Jooheon starts to move, too fast and too tight as he starts up his own punishing rhythm. The younger ducks his head away, gritting his teeth against any of Hoseok’s gentle pleas.

It’s not long before the growing ache between Jooheon’s shuddering thighs forces him to admit defeat, leaving him aching and still with Hoseok’s thick length throbbing urgently within him. They’re locked together like that, seconds ticking by as silent tears begin to track their way down over red cheeks and fall into the rivulets of the elder’s bare torso.

Hoseok hesitantly moves to sit up, following through smoothly when the boy in his lap doesn’t resist, only hunching over to hide his tear-stained face from view. He cradles hiccuping sobs into his palms, curving around Jooheon’s fragile body with his arms, his back - using his everything to cage the younger boy in and away from the cruel outside world.

“Why do I make you cry so much?” Hoseok asks with a sad little laugh, gently tipping a wet cheek up to face him. He strokes his fingers across every salty river, heart aching as he marvels at the pretty shade of red spreading across translucent eyelids.

“Because you’re a liar,” Jooheon breathes out brokenly, tucking his face into the crook of Hoseok’s neck, looping his arms around the older man as if he’s the last thing left in this world for him to hold onto. He twists his hips deliberately, despite the wetness spilling down his cheeks, forcing Hoseok’s hands to grip him tight to still him in his erratic actions.

“Don’t you believe me?” Hoseok whispers, closing his eyes as he pulls Jooheon close, their bare chests brushing and limbs becoming irrevocably tangled. He loops his own arms around the other’s curved waist, loose but without any intention of letting him go ever again. At the younger’s insistent clawing at his back, he slowly starts up again, pistoning in and out with long dragging thrusts.

“No-” Jooheon chokes, voice breaking as Hoseok’s hot length finally begins to move inside of him again. He doesn’t know what to feel: pain, pleasure, betrayal, _love_? He settles for clinging onto Hoseok’s smooth back, the taste of his own tears saturating the inside of his mouth as a deep ache settles over his lower half.

“I love you so much, you don’t understand - it’s _too much_ ,” Hoseok grits out, shuddering as Jooheon progressively tightens with each thrust, a cavern of fire just waiting to melt him down from the inside out. He keeps talking, muttering frantically about everything dear to him, letting the words skid like soft dandelion fluff across sweat-soaked shoulders.

He can’t stop, not even as he nears his own release, not even when Jooheon’s nails dig into his back, scratching hard enough to draw blood as the younger man comes with a wet exhale. His own orgasm tears through him like a roaring wave, roiling through his stomach in a swell of flames and leaving his insides burning with a trail of unstoppable wildfires.

They collapse onto the bed together, Jooheon still looped tight and unmoving around Hoseok’s body. In the destructive aftermath of their release, Hoseok can hear everything: the rush of blood through Jooheon’s pulsing veins, the clockwork ticking of his beating heart, and even the minute palpitations in his shuddering breath.

“I love you,” he confesses again, hopelessly, forlornly, as he edges the sharp points of his teeth to the juncture of the boy’s exposed neck.

The only response he receives is a hand cupped around the back of his head, tenderly pushing it towards willing flesh. Before the slick sweetness of bloodlust overtakes him, he could swear he hears a voice, so small and unsure, that muffles the words _do you?_ into the crown of his head.

It’s too late to hesitate as his fangs nick open a fragile vein, the red ambrosia of life trickling a familiar path into his mouth again. He drinks ravenously, selfishly, until everything is forgotten, save for the soft warm body harbored within his arms.

 

-

 

The next morning Jooheon wakes alone with tear-crusted eyes, black and blue marks littered across his aching body. There’s still a hint of last night sitting in the musk of the air and hidden within the shadows of the rumpled sheets.

When he runs his hand across his throat, there’s a sleek new bandage wrapped around it. He fingers the edge of the gauze lightly, feeling his throat bob as he swallows down the bitter remnants of yesterday’s encounter. It’s a familiar promise of what’s to come, and Jooheon grips onto the thin fabric, curling into a tight ball as he digs his forehead into the rounded tops of his knees.

His fingers creep up around his throat, tickling the space between gauze and skin, tugging hesitantly with bated breath. The bandage holds strong, the usual safety pin there at the back of his throat to keep it tucked against his wounds. He closes his eyes, thinking of tonight, of when Hoseok will meet him again with a hard embrace and a steel gaze, of bruising kisses and meaningless confessions.

“I love you,” he whispers towards the empty imprint of what used to be another body laying next to him on the same bed.

The cold morning sun holds no reply and neither does the desolate space before him. Jooheon closes his eyes and sleeps, fingers slipping noose-like from his throat. He dreams of everything and nothing as he waits for night to come again.

**Author's Note:**

> title stolen from a troye sivan song, i'm not sure which one lol. either way thank you for reading and please leave a comment about what you thought!! seriously comments are the only things that drive this hellish creative process please feed me :'''''')  
> hit me up on tumblr: [x](https://happycakestories.tumblr.com/)  
> 


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